Rock Island, Ill. – Winning matters. To help ensure the U.S. Army maintains its advantage over near-peer adversaries like Russia and China, Joint Munitions Command is dedicated to modernizing its munitions stockpiles for the future fight.
Gen. Ed Daly, commanding general of Army Materiel Command and the Army’s senior sustainer, directed JMC to develop a process to integrate with Army Futures Command’s eight Cross-Functional Teams, the modernization-focused groups comprised of professionals across the Army to develop next-generation equipment in high-priority areas. These CFTs are crucial to maintaining the Army’s overmatch in the years to come.
“Sustaining ammunition is essential for winning the future fight,” Daly said. “We must ensure we modernize our munitions and the support systems required for them to function.”
The CFTs were established in 2017 and advance essential capabilities such as Long-Range Precision Fires, Future Vertical Lift, Next-Generation Combat Vehicles, Network Command, Control, Communication and Intelligence, Assured Positioning Navigation and Timing, Air and Missile Defense, Soldier Lethality and Synthetic Training Environment.
JMC professionals collaborate with each CFT to ensure every project and priority area accounts for the equipment, personnel, logistics processes and other considerations required for munitions systems to function wherever and whenever warfighters need them. The command’s Sustainment Production directorate manages JMC’s involvement in the endeavor and its four core competencies: producing, storing, shipping, and demilitarizing munitions for U.S. troops. The team also includes JMC’s joint service liaisons from the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force to ensure the needs of all warfighters are represented.
“These CFTs are still relatively new,” Brad Maas, a lead engineer in JMC’s Sustainment Production directorate, said. “As the CFT programs mature, we’ll make sure we are 100 percent ready to meet all munitions requirements for the Army. It’s essential that we are all on the same page in order to sustain these munitions for the warfighter.”
The group developed procedures to help integrate sustainment into the overall CFT modernization process and created assessment metrics to determine JMC’s current ability to meet future ammunition requirements and mitigate any potential capability gaps so JMC can continue providing and sustaining munitions readiness to American warfighters in the coming decades.
“JMC’s involvement in the CFTs is essential to the Army’s ability to win 20, 30, even 50 years from now,” Joe Klunder, JMC’s director of sustainment production, said. “We can’t wait until future operational challenges arise to start planning for them.”
The JMC representatives regularly meet with the larger CFT groups to influence the design of ammunition items, collaborate with ongoing modernization efforts and continuously assess the impact of new information on JMC’s readiness to support future requirements. As CFT programs mature, JMC will continue to influence development to sustain the plans for tomorrow’s battlefield.
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